Murderer Among Us

This sweet picture is of Lindon, LeeLee's sweet chicken.  She was an awesome egg layer and a sweetheart to boot.  I guess you can tell that by my use of the past tense that Lindon is no longer with us.  We knew we had a treat to the chickens because when Hunter and LeeLee put them to bed on Tuesday night, they caught a glimpse of one.  We were cautious and set the trap.  I checked several times a day on Wednesday, but we didn't get it, so I was hoping it had moved on.  But yesterday, I took the day off get some much needed sleep to fight a cold, and boy did I sleep.  I slept right through the murder.  I was so upset to find poor Lindon's body laying in the fence.  Hunter helped me clean everything up while LeeLee was away at gymnastics, and we changed our trap strategy for our murderer.  We were all on a mission to catch the offender.  I figured since the murderer couldn't carry the chicken out of the fence it would surely come back in the night to eat it's kill.  So we moved the trap into the fence.  Sure enough, by morning we had offender.

I'll be honest, I wish the murderer wasn't so cute....it would much easier to be mad at an opossum or a raccoon.  But this is a beautiful cat.  It has been living at the foreclosed house next door for some time now.  We have watched it hunt in their back yard where small wild life is generally plentiful.  I guess now that it is bigger, it has moved onto bigger prey.  As soon as Hunter came up announcing that the cat had been caught, LeeLee started chanting, "Kill the cat."  I can assure you we won't kill the cat, but she is really hurt about losing her chicken.

Right now the cat is in my kitchen in a large crate.  It appears to be a complete feral.  I will give it a few days to see if it can calm down, but with the high incidence of rabies around here right now, we won't be putting any hands on it unless it calms down.  If you happen to recognize this cat let me know.  I would love it if someone has been missing this cat and we could reunite them.  I know, it's a dream, but it would be the perfect ending.